A common practice in treating vascular diseases is to place a stent within a subject vessel. This allows the vessel to heal as the stent reinforces the vessel's inner walls. The stent also may help in re-establishing fluid flow through the vessel.
Stent placement can be temporary or permanent. If it is temporary, the stent helps in reconstructing or repairing the vessel and is then moved from the subject. The repaired vessel then functions normally without stent interaction with the vessel. In certain instances an improperly positioned stent must be removed from the vessel and either repositioned or replaced. This is particularly possible in those instances in which the stent is launched into the vessel without control over its ultimate position. If, in the attending physician's opinion, the stent should be repositioned and/or removed subsequent to this placement, some mechanism must be utilized to retract or retrieve the stent.
One known procedure for stent removal is surgically removing the stent from the vessel. It is one object of the invention to achieve a less traumatic retrieval and/or repositioning mechanism particularly suited for use with a stent but having application in maneuvering any object within a vessel.